


suits of armors (hearts and arrows)

by orphan_account



Series: Prompts [5]
Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Angst, Cheating, Hurt and comfort, M/M, Open ended, i d i o t s, questioning relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 12:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17425835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Richie shook out his hand, stinging and rapidly bruising, as he watched Ben struggle to find the words to say to him. Richie couldn’t even find it in him to feel bad for himself. He’d been setting himself up to be hurt, and he’d known from the get-go. “Ah, hey, don’t worry about it, man.” Richie croaked through his dried throat. “Eddie had always had a hard-on for Big Bill, I’d set myself up for failure.”[Prompts: 14. “Can’t you leave me alone?”  +  17. “Please.” || "“None if it was real, but I wish it was + I did it because I had to, not because I ever wanted to]





	1. Chapter 1

Richie was on his fifth cigarette in a row when Ben found him. Stepping over several discarded bottles and plastic cups to reach his friend. “Are you going to come back inside?” 

Richie coughed awkwardly once and forced his throat to clear. “No.” Ben gave him a sad look and Richie rushed on before he could continue. “I can’t go back in there, I can’t look at Bill right now and I defintely can’t look at Eddie. I know he had to figure out how he feels or what-the-fuck-ever but couldn’t he have done it before we got together? Why did he have to…”

_Why did he have to use me like that?_ The question hung unsaid between the two friends, but they both heard it as if it had been spoken. Eddie and Richie had danced around each other for years before they finally bit down on the bullet and made the jump to boyfriends nearly five months before.

When it had finally happened, the Losers Club and almost everybody around school, had just sort of assumed that it was be-end and end-all for them both. Maybe yeah, it had been a little bit of shock for people outside of the Losers when it had happened. Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak? They couldn’t think of two more mismatched people- until they really saw them interacting as a couple and couldn’t deny the love that ran between the two. It wasn’t a question for anybody; Eddie and Richie loved each other, they would make it work in a long run.

It wasn’t a question for anybody except Eddie, apparently. 

Richie shook out his hand, stinging and rapidly bruising, as he watched Ben struggle to find the words to say to him. Richie couldn’t even find it in him to feel bad for himself. He’d been setting himself up to be hurt, and he’d known from the get-go. “Ah, hey, don’t worry about it, man.” Richie croaked through his dried throat. “Eddie had always had a hard-on for Big Bill, I’d set myself up for failure.” 

“Eddie loves you,” Ben said, firmly, honestly, confidently. Richie raised one brow and cocked Ben half a smirk. “He  _does._ I would bet my entire college savings on it. Eddie loves you, I don’t know what that was in there- closure, I guess. He’d had a crush on Bill since we were little kids, maybe he just needed to-”

“He’s had a crush on Bill since we were little kids,” Richie repeated bitterly. “And we wasn’t sure if he that crush was stronger than whatever we had so he had to test it out.  _In front_ of half the school, I might add. There’s no pretending it didn’t happen, Haystack.”

“Well, that and Bill’s broken nose,” Ben said, smirking a little bit to himself. It had almost been amusing to watch, Eddie and Mike rushing quickly to help Bill back up to his feet. Eddie had fluttered around like a little bird, panicky and little shrill, moving to chase after Richie only to quickly rush back to Bill and apologize for the eighteenth time. Mike had been holding entirely entire weight, and when he’d asked his boyfriend for assistance, Stan had merely staring back at him blankly. 

“Did I really break his nose?” Richie asked lightly, tone only letting out the slightly hint of smugness. 

“Oh, defintely,” Ben confirmed with a chuckle. “That was a wicked under cut, Rich, I didn’t think your noodle arms had it in them.”

“The rage was on me,” Richie replied, holding his hand up which Ben met gladly with a high five. 

“Rich! Oh, fuck, Richie!” Eddie’s voice carried towards him, and Richie’s posture immediately moved back to stiff and stood-off. It was the kind of stance that he pulled with assholes at school and not the kind he ever wanted to pull with one of the other Losers. 

Eddie stumbled up to them, still a little obviously intoxicated, but Ben and Richie both had to marvel at much the last fifteen minutes seemed to have sobered him up. His eyes had lost the drunken glaze to them, but were now red-rimmed and glossy from the tears that Ben had left at the start of. 

“ **Can’t you leave me alone?** ” Richie groaned and Eddie flinched.

“ **Please?** ” He almost begged. 

“Fine. How’s Bill?” Richie said in a chilling voice and Eddie jerked back at the tone. 

Eddie played with the zipper on his fannypack, and his cheeks coloured slightly. “I… He’s fine, he’s… he was bleeding a lot, I think you broke his nose-”

“Good.” Richie said shortly. 

Eddie gave him a sharp look as though about to jump into a lecture when the situation crashed itself back down onto him. “You shouldn’t have hit him, he didn’t… I kissed him, he didn’t even-”

“Well, I wasn’t going to punch you in the face, Eddie.” Richie rolled his eyes, wiping his hands on his already messy jeans. “Though you’d probably deserve it.” Eddie blanched, but Richie continued on as though he didn’t see it. “Did you get the answer you were looking for, Eddie?” 

“I-yeah,” Eddie nodded, tears burning back into his eyes. “I didn’t… I didn’t feel  _anything,_ I don’t think I ever…” He shook his head. “I love  _you,_ Richie. And I… I knew that all along but I never knew what I felt for Bill and I needed to know.”

“That’s something you should have known before you started talking somebody else,” Richie snapped, the anger starting to seep back into his voice. “You don’t just dance into a serious relationship when you aren’t sure how you feel about someone!”

“I knew how I felt about you! I always knew how I felt about you!” Eddie argued, his body trembling as though he was leave in the autumn wind. 

“Obviously you didn’t,” Richie said slowly. “Or those possible feelings you had for Bill wouldn’t have mattered.”

Eddie’s mouth dropped open and Ben resisted the urge to smirk. Eddie was Ben’s friend, too, Ben loved Eddie and knew that in truth Eddie hadn’t meant to cause anybody any pain. That he had just been blinded by his own crisis, not stopping to fully think of the aftermath. 

Just as Eddie looked ready to argue again, Stan’s voice came blaring over to them. “Tozier, let’s go. We’re leaving.” 

Richie took one last look at Eddie’s seemingly smaller than usual form and gave a sad shake of his head. He bounced over to Stan, who clasped his best friend on the shoulder as he guided him over to Stan’s car.

Eddie, to his credit, didn’t break down into Ben’s arms until after the car had driven away. 


	2. Chapter 2

Eddie had been in bed for four days and his mother was absolutely convinced that he was dying. He was more than willing to let her believe it, because as quick as Sonia was to drag Eddie to the hospital at any sign of disobedience or a even a bruise, when she believed him truly ill she’d never take him within a hundred miles of a place that could make him more sick.

It was the more of the fifth day, Eddie more than prepared to suffer the consequences of missing an entire week of school, when the great cause of his suffering tumbled in his window at quarter after 7 in the morning.

“Get up.” Richie said in a shallow voice, sounding about as good as Eddie had been feeling the past few days. 

“No.” Eddie grumbled, pushing himself deeper into the, admittedly starting to get pretty gross, blankets on his bed. Only to said gross blankets yanked off of him and tossed across the room.

“Don’t you  _no_  me, Kaspbrak,” Richie practically hissed at him. The voice was one so different from Eddie had ever ever really heard Richie sound, like all the jokes and joy had been sucked right out him, and it made Eddie’s chest ache all the harder.. “You don’t get to pull this shit. If I have to go school everyday and listen to people’s fucking whispers and put up with their fucking staring, then so do you. This is  _your_ fault, I might add.”

Eddie launched himself up into bed, trying to ignore the gaunt feeling in this stomach when his brain attacked him with the thoughts of how absolutely disgusting he must look right now. Ben had taken him home from the party on Saturday, Eddie had changed into his pajamas then promptly dropped himself into bed and had barely moved since. 

He supposed that Richie didn’t look much better than he did, his usually wild curls seeming matted and flattened down to his head, and his glasses did very little to hide the bags that were littering underneath his eyes. Eddie was sure if his chest got any tighter that’s he’d loose all ability to breathe. 

“I don’t care about them staring and talking,” Eddie said quietly. “They were always staring or talking our whole lives. It’s not a new thing but I couldn’t… I can’t go to school and be alone all day just knowing that I fucked up everything in my life. If I have to do that alone, I’ll do it alone where nobody can see me.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking shitting me,” Richie said, sounding more like he was grumbling to himself than speaking to Eddie. “Do you think I came over here to drag your depressed ass out of bed because we all hate you now and you have no friends?” 

“I…” Eddie trailed off, biting at his bottom lip. In that small logically part of his mind that wasn’t riddled with sadness and anxiety, he’d known that the Losers Club weren’t going to cut him off and desert him for kissing Bill, but he hadn’t been able to get the looks on their faces out of his head. “Richie, I’m sorry.”

His voice broke on his last word, and he knew then that was what he’d been avoiding all this time. It wasn’t judging stares and whispers from classmates that Eddie didn’t even really care about, or the thought of the Losers dropping him, but of the acknowledgement that he was going to have to face Richie completely sober and completely heartbroken. 

“Look, Eddie,” Richie waved his hand through the air dismissively. “I have been doing a lot of thinking about this for the last four fucking days and I- I know that  **none of it was real, but I wish it was**  and I’m still so fucking pissed at you because I thought you were  _it_  for me and you I don’t take shit seriously and I was serious about you but I…” Richie shook his head and his eyes fluttered closed. “But  _in love with you_ or not, I still love your stupid ass, and I don’t want to imagine my life without you in it. Asshole.” 

Eddie stared up at Richie for a moment, open mouthed and teary eyed, and his brain rattled inside his head to find something to say to him. He’d meant what he’d said to Richie at the party, he’d never doubted for a second how he’d felt about Richie, but there had always been that hesitation in the back of his mind. His crush on Bill had been an all consuming thing for most of his childhood, it had been something he’d felt defined part of who he was for most of his life. 

Falling in love with Richie- loud, obnoxious and messy Richie Tozier- it had been a complete shock to the system. Not something Eddie had been expected and not really anything he had wanted, but he couldn’t deny it. His feelings for Richie had come in fast and uncontrollable and Eddie couldn’t have done a damn thing to stop them. The worst part had been that Eddie hadn’t  _wanted_ to stop them. The only thing that been scarier than loving Richie, was that Eddie really loved loving him. 

Even months after finally revealing how he’d felt and getting things together with Richie, it was sometimes a shock to the system that he loved the trashmouth. He couldn’t help his mind wandering back to the way he’d always felt about Bill, their fearless leader, Eddie’s believed first love. He would’ve laid down on his own sword for Bill if he’d ever asked him to, and that couldn’t… that couldn’t be nothing. 

But then Eddie had kissed him, and the only thing he’d been able to think about in the moment and since was Richie. 

“ **I did it because I had to, not because I ever wanted to**.” Eddie said quietly, the words falling from his mouth before he had a second to think them through. “It’s so scary being in love with you, Rich, you know? My crush on Bill, it was  _never_ scary and it was always there and I…” 

Richie sat down beside Eddie on the bed with Eddie’s blanket in his hands, officially cutting off Eddie’s trail of thought. He jerked to look at him, and Richie gave him a soft smile. It almost reached his eyes and Eddie’s heart soared in his chest. 

Richie shuffled backwards and tossed the blanket over himself. “I don’t really feel like going to school today, either, you know,” he said softly. “So, if you wanted to we could just… stay in here. Today. And then… start fresh tomorrow, you know? Or whatever.”

Eddie knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. This was Richie’s olive branch and Eddie would accept it gladly. It wasn’t a resolution, it wasn’t even close, and they’d have a lot of ground to cover before they’d ever really be okay. For right now, though, Eddie was okay with the curling up next Richie under his blankets and ignoring all their problems for one day. 


End file.
